Changes to Productivity in Tech on the Server Side and Why We Were Not Publishing

TLDR: I haven't been publishing episodes because I've been moving our site from one host to another in order to save money, have more control over content and easier management.

You may have noticed a lack of posts for the past couple weeks. I have been working hard to migrate the servers from Libsyn/AWS to Digital Ocean. While this has been somewhat challenging, I look forward to the benifits that the community will enjoy because of it.

Cost

Cost of operations is always a factor when making decisions like this. Here is a current breakdown of the regular monthly costs before this transition.

BEFORE

$15 - Libsyn: Productivity in Tech Podcast

$15 - Libsyn: PIT:Reflections

$4-6 - AWS: WebServer

$10 - Buffer

$10 - Dropbox

TOTAL: $56.00/month
Does not include annual plans that would increase the monthly rate to about $80/month in extraneous services

This switch will remove the need for Libsyn and AWS and only charge for Digital Ocean.

AFTER

$15 - Libsyn: Productivity in Tech Podcast

$15 - Libsyn: PIT:Reflections

$4-6 - AWS: WebServer

$10 - Digital Ocean

$10 - Buffer

$10 - Dropbox
TOTAL: $30.00/month savings:$240/year.

I'm also happy that the patreon subscribers who support Productivity in Tech have pledged enough to cover the server costs in full and have started funding some of the other expenses. This means we can lower our funding goals and get more amazing content and products to you.

Content Management

When your information is spread across multiple services it is harder to maintain everything. This is why we decided to move our blog off of Medium and put it on the website. Thanks to Digital Ocean'sVolume Storage Plans, the podcast files are now on the same server as the website. This makes the server a one-stop shop for all Productivity in Tech content.

Freedom of Usage

I have not written this piece as a praise to Digital Ocean for a criticism of the other companies. I believe that the different services that I was using were all great in their own right and had many advantages to using them (which is why I originally did). This migration was out of several minor frustrations.

Uploading Episodes and blog posts

Wouldn't it be nice if the process for loading podcast episodes and blog posts. I have been building the upload systems from the ground up. This means that the system will be flexible and customizable. It will also be a smiliar process across the board.

RSS

When I started doing PITReflections! They were hosted on the Productivity in Tech Podcast feed. As a courtesy to listeners who wanted just the weekly podcast episodes, the shows were separated. Naturally, there were some that wanted a Master feed with the shows combined. I was told by the team at Libsyn that there was no way of doing this without creating a third show. With us managing our own feeds (and the content sources) we can create not only the three feeds we need but even more feeds (like the much requested patreon feed(coming soon))

Scalabity

Simple Systems Scale Better. This is why one of my favorite applications Trello is so powerful. The Productivity in Tech system is now much simpler and will be much easier to manage as it scales. Also with Digital Ocean's Droplet Resizing system, I can quickly adjust the file size to match the usage needs.

If you would like to know more about how the new system works, you can reach out to us on twitter - @prodintech.

Of course with any migration there may be a bug or two. Please let us know by sending us some feedback!